enom bad domain registrar. Refused to provide EPP.

24/02/2010 at 2:37 am | In recommendation | 2 Comments | Edit this post

I was the owner of h_r_un.com. This is a domain I bought way back in Feb 01 from enom. It expired recently because I forgotten about the expiry date. The reminders to renew went to an old email address that has expired and now belongs to enom. Before the expiry, I have planned to transfer to namecheap.

So now that is has expired, I initiate a transfer in namecheap as I did before for my other domains. As usual an EPP key is required. I raised a ticket in enom to request for an EPP key. It took them 2 days to reply. When they did reply, they said the have sent the EPP key to the old email address I mentioned earlier. I requested that they resend the email to me on my current email address. 2 days later, they replied and say that they cannot do that. I must pay up the annual fee first.

Geez, in the end, I cancelled my transfer at namecheap. Would rather wait till the domain is free and then register it as new. Moral of the story.

  • Do not use enom to register your domains ever! use others like namecheap, godaddy etc.
  • Always remember to update your email address on your domains
  • remember the date of expiry for all of your domains

MacDrive HFS on Windows?

22/02/2010 at 10:58 pm | In Mac, recommendation, software, windows | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

I was a user of MacDrive 7 and was not really happy with the experience. It does take some memory and not entirely bug free.

Now there is a newer version 8 and from looking at the specs, it isn’t much of a difference, just more compatible to Windows 7.

If you read my previous post you will realise the best way is to get an extra hardisk for your mac instead of trying to share them with windows or Linux. Hardisk are cheap and this hassle is not worth it.

If you insists on sharing, it is better that you format in NTFS than FAT32 because it allows you to store files bigger than 4gb each. The drawback is that it is read only whereas Fat32 allows you to write to it as well. Why can’t windows and mac just get along?

Mac Could not modify partition map USB Drive

31/12/2009 at 6:04 pm | In Mac | 1 Comment | Edit this post

I’ve been happily using a 1TB drive on my windows and then decide to use it as my Mac time machine backup drive. Despite the fact that I’ve got loads of space on my drive and many partitions to choose from but alas, for time machine to work, it requires that destination volumes be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). When you try to format a partition as Mac, you will get the error “Could not modify partition map”.

Despite all my attempts to Google for the solution, nobody seem to offer a solution. It is because there is none. The reason why it could not modify the partition map is because the partitions of the drive are created by windows but mac could not modify it! The short but painful solution is to

  • backup the entire 1tb contents elsewhere
  • repartition using Mac

That’s what I did using Master Boot Record (MBR) and it works. Although OS X supports MBR, there’s a catch: Mac OS Extended volumes can be no larger than 512GB on a drive partitioned with the MBR scheme. So if you have, say, a 750GB or 1TB drive, you must repartition it to use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) or Apple Partition Map (APM) scheme before it can work with Time Machine.

Backup Strategy

19/11/2009 at 4:35 pm | In security | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

Assuming you manage 20 websites in 2 servers for a living, you gotta have a backup strategy to avert disaster. Here are mine. Not the best but at least until I can come out with a better strategy.

#1 Redundency

Always keep 2 copies of a site. If you can afford 3, nobody is stopping you. Other than the 2 servers, I have another 2 servers which I do my development from. So if the main server goes down due to whatever reasons, typhoon earthquake etc. . The development server can become a replacement. Try to put the production and development servers as far as possible.

Sometime you don’t need natural disaster to damage your data. You could be the one that could screw up your data and to be honest, it happened to me. I dropped the wrong table but lucky for me… I had my other server. phew. Just remember before doing something dangerous like dropping a table, please back your data up first.

However, you must be diligent in syncing the data so you have like a mirror image.

#2 Backup

I did contemplate on having a CVS or SVC or you know… to keep track of changes but I think a small outfit of webdesigners and 2 coders doesn’t need to go thru that hassle. I opt for incremental backup. In Mac OS, we have time machine. In Windows we have tools like Acronis. The good thing about this is that, the backup is regular and the size of backup is small. In some cases even smaller than the original data because it is compressed. You can go back and revert to 6 months ago if you want to.

However, you must be diligent in following your backup schedule.

Learn from your mistakes. Be diligent or you be sorry.

10 People Who Know Lots About Programming

15/11/2009 at 1:51 am | In internet, recommendation | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

Read this article and thought the list is good but not entirely to my liking. So here are the few that I shortlisted and some that are missing from the list.

#1 Linus Torvalds
Linus is the creator of the extremely popular Linux open source operating system.

HH : A better OS than Windows or Mac. It’s free folks. Some say PHP is lousy but it is all about widespread use.

#2 About Rasmus Lerdorf
Rasmus Lerdorf is the creator of PHP.

HH: I’m using it now. So does this blog and Facebook.

#3 Larry Wall
Larry Wall is a programmer and author, most widely known for his creation of the Perl programming language in 1987.

HH: Before PHP I used Perl. It sux now if you consider how troublesome it is to setup but I am grateful when it was king.

#4 Brendan Eich
Brendan Eich is a computer programmer and creator of the JavaScript programming language. He is also the CTO of Mozilla, creator of Firefox and Thunderbird among others.

HH : Everyone uses JavaScript. Firefox and Thunderbird rocks!

#5 Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol.

HH : Without whom, I can’t download stuff.

#6 Guido van Rossum
Guido is the author the the Python programming language.

HH : I love to try out Python but see little need in my work. Did consider using Django CMS framework to replace Drupal but so far Drupal has not failed me… yet.

#7 Miguel de Icaza
Miguel is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects.

HH : Gnome is popular in Linux.

#8 Dries Buytaert
Dries Buytaert is the creator of Drupal.

HH : My favourite CMS. Sorry I don’t like WordPress so I am leaving Matt Mullenweg out from this list.

#9 Mark Zuckerberg
Mark is the founder of Facebook. Facebook easily outshine myspace and orkut.

HH : I spent a lot of time there. Connects to my old friends.

#10 Hanafi Harron
Hanafi is me. I am a nobody at the moment

HH : I love me.

Making PHP4 work on PHP5 (register globals)

03/11/2009 at 8:47 pm | In PHP | 1 Comment | Edit this post

The older PHP version 4 uses register globals directive set to “on”. It is better that you avoid those and use super globals which look like

  • $_POST says that variables in that array come from a form.
  • $_GET says that variables are passed through the URI.
  • $_SESSION says that variables are in a session.

Avoid those that look like

  • session_register(),
  • session_unregister(),
  • session_destroy()

These functions has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 5.3.0 and REMOVED as of PHP 6.0.0. Relying on this functions is highly discouraged.

So what if you don’t have time to change your existing codes to PHP5? You can either enable register globals to on in your PHP.ini although it is not recommended. If you use Apache, you are in luck because with .htaccess you can decide which directory have register globals turned on. Create a .htaccess on the said folder eg..

php_flag register_globals on
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

This still won’t work if your apache is not configured to allow this. So you have to add this permission to allow .htaccess to work on the folder. eg.at “www/oldshit”
Read more

Dubious Web Service provider

29/09/2009 at 8:00 pm | In recommendation | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

I’ve been in this business for more than 5 years and I’ve seen bad service providers that tarnish our profession. Most of the time, the clients came to me and complain about these cheats and expect us to clean up their mess.

My advice is to check the service provider’s background.

  • Do they have a website?
  • How long have they been in business?
  • Do they have full-time designers?
  • Where is their office located?
  • What are their portfolio?
  • Wh do their clients say about them?
  • How does their namecard looks like?

Some con-artists may look convincing, but they do nothing but talk and promise the moon. They can’t deliver.

Hosts File

07/08/2009 at 9:40 am | In Mac, security, windows | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

I always forget where this file is located so here it is.

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC

The “hosts file” contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory (cache) at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local (your) machine. Another feature of the HOSTS file is its ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, providing the entry exists.

The location is quite similar in linux and Mac OS.
/etc/hosts

Layer Mask in photoshop

22/07/2009 at 1:11 am | In photoshop | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

In real life, if you want to paintbrush something, say the alphabet “A” on a helmet, you would mask the area on the helmet that you do not want the paint to fall using a masking tape. In Photoshop, you can do the same using layer mask.

To create a Layer Mask either go through Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All or at the bottom of the layer palette click the icon three in from the left (the circle in a rectangle one). This will create a white rectangle to the right of the selected layer. Click on this box, the brush colours will probably turn black and white, if not hit D to return them to Black and White defaults.

Now simply use the brush to paint on your object. Where you paint black that layer is invisible, where it’s white the layer is visible. Pretty simple really. Any shade of grey between has a different level of transparency depending on how dark it is.

Import Export Vista Windows Contacts to MS Outlook

23/05/2009 at 10:37 pm | In email, windows | Leave a Comment | Edit this post

Most Windows users use MS Office and by default use Oulook. When they use Vista, they are introduced to Windows Mail and Windows Contact. When I began using Vista, I did not install MS Office because I don’t use Windows that much. However, as time goes by, I have no choice but to install MS Office and also Outlook. At first I presumed that importing my Windows Contacts would be a breeze but to my surprise it wasn’t. I looked under import, and did not see Windows Contacts listed.

I Googled it and many people have this problem as well. Some experts suggested that we export the Windows Contacts to .csv or .vcf and then importing these to MS Outlook. Well it worked but there is a better way. Follow the steps below.

1. File -> Import and Export Settings.

2. Then select ‘Import from another program or file’. Click Next.

3. Scroll down and select ‘Outlook Express 4.x, 5.x, 6.x or Windows Mail’.

4. A couple of dialog boxes and all your contacts are magically added!

If you use a phone (smartphone is best) and used to sync with your Windows Contacts. You can also populate your Outlook contacts by

1. Sync as per normal to get the latest information out from your Windows Contacts.

2. Now change your sync from Windows Contacts to Outlook.

3. You will be prompt if you want to replace or merge. Choose merge.

4. Your once empty Outlook contacts is now filled with your Windows Contacts.

Works for my iPhone. Should work for Nokia or any other phones too.You can also do the reverse, ie. populate your Windows Contacts from Outlook using this method.

I recommend that you not use outlook for anything. That .PST Outlook format is useless even if you want to export to Macintosh MS Office. It may import easily but it would not export that easily. For example, if I want to export my contacts to .VCF a standard format, I was unable to unless I buy some software. Windows Contacts on the other hand can export to .VCF readily, using Windows Mail.

I suppose, Microsoft crippled Outlook exporting features to open standards like .VCF and .ICS because they do not want people to use other PIMs except Outlook. If you are using Outlook, I suggest you export your data now and start using software that are compliant to open standards. It is no surprise that Gmail and Google Calendar is gaining popularity while Microsoft is steadily losing market share.

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